Personal History (37 page)
Authors: Katharine Graham
The price Phil had agreed to—$2.47 million—was the highest ever paid for a television station at that time, I believe. This was the first time Phil was out ahead of my father, who was slightly nervous about the proposed purchase. It took a call from Don Swatland, Dad’s friend and a lawyer at Cravath, the corporate law firm in New York, to reassure him that it was a good idea. Actually, it turned out to be a
great
idea. Phil always referred to WJXT—WMBR’s call letters were changed in 1958—as his rabbit’s foot. The station built up enormous strength while it was alone in the field. In fact, it was the only VHF station between Atlanta and Miami. The newspapers in Jacksonville, owned by the railroad, were second-rate, so the town came to rely on WJXT as the principal source for news, and this remained the case for many years, until NBC went on the air with a station that had twelve owners, providing negligible competition. Even today, with massive competition, WJXT remains dominant in the market.
A
FTER
J
OHN
S
WEETERMAN
came and began to take hold of the business side of the company, Phil was freer to turn his attention to news and
editorial. On the news side, he would have liked to have correspondents overseas and felt the
Post
wouldn’t “be doing a proper job in the capital until we manage that.” Many of the editorial issues with which the
Post
was dealing had to do with the increasing anxieties about communism in those years after World War II. The political right kept manipulating America’s fears in a demagogic way, and the atmosphere grew more poisonous as the Cold War grew more intense. The fear of communism, on which Joseph McCarthy and the political right fed just a few years later, was palpable everywhere, and the
Post
took strong stands from the beginning, which wasn’t easy for a paper operating on the economic fringe and fighting for its life. The attacks on us for being liberals or even reds began then, and rarely ceased over the next several years, adding greatly to both our financial problems and our distinction.
There were, of course, genuine, strong reasons for anticommunism, both at home and abroad. At home, the party had succeeded in establishing a surprising network of infiltrators and even spies. Abroad, the Soviets were being very aggressive all over Europe, especially in Berlin, and in 1948 the communists took over in Czechoslovakia. Obviously, there were real concerns, but the political exploitation and misuse of them were shameless.
The
Post
had begun to cover the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or HUAC. By the end of 1947, we were under fairly constant attack for our attitude toward the committee’s activities, and the editors felt the need to respond to those attacks. One editorial put the
Post
’s position succinctly:
This newspaper’s criticism of the committee has been directed consistently at its methods rather than at its aims.… Because the committee under successive chairmanships has equated loyalty with conformity, has concerned itself with opinions rather than activities, has disregarded the most elementary rules of fair play in dealing with witnesses, its conduct has seemed to us to be more dangerously un-American than that of any of the groups or individuals it has investigated.
An article that appeared in March 1948 in a conservative publication called
Plain Talk
attacked the
Post
as a “Trojan Horse for totalitarianism,” following the Communist Party line on most major issues, and assailed Phil especially as “a constant apologist for the paper’s editorial policy.” The piece also censured Herblock and charged Alan Barth, “unmistakably the ideological guide of its editorial page,” with “adherence to the party line.” Phil was so enraged that he considered legal action, dismissing the idea only when he learned that
Plain Talk
had no capital. Instead, he wrote
an eight-page memo to the
Post
’s staff explaining that the diatribe had been written by a disgruntled
Post
employee who had been let go, and laying out facts to “show the complete absence of any basis for the opinions expressed in the article.”
When we were assaulted as communist sympathizers or even dupes, our competition in Washington was only too happy to jump on—or even jump-start—the bandwagon of censure. Both the
Times-Herald
and its relative in Chicago, the
Tribune
, attacked us relentlessly. The
Tribune
called the
Post
alternately a “defender of the Reds” and a spokesman for the Truman administration. They were hoping to undermine us with our readers and advertisers. Backing the reporting and commentary as well as Herblock’s strong cartoons, while trying to protect our economic life-blood, took a lot of courage and judgment on Phil’s part.
In August of 1948, the
Post’s
Mary Spargo reported that HUAC had summoned Whittaker Chambers, a former member of the Communist Party but then associate editor of
Time
magazine, to testify. Chambers said that he had once belonged to but had quit the Communist Party, and in his testimony he named some U.S. officials as acting for the Soviets, among them Alger Hiss.
The Hiss affair ignited controversies on every side. Late in 1948, he was indicted for perjury after having denied passing secret documents to a communist spy ring, the statute of limitations precluding the stiffer charge of espionage. After a very public trial with passions running high, he was convicted in a second trial and sentenced to a five-year prison term. The
Post
had editorially noted that Hiss had threatened to sue if Chambers’s charges were repeated off the floor of Congress. They were, and we challenged him to sue Chambers, which he did—hence the trials.
The
Post
was attacked from both sides for its coverage of the Hiss affair. Many of our friends criticized Phil and the paper for being too timid and less than objective. Our friend Jim Rowe, for example, wrote Phil several scathing letters, including one in which he said:
… for pure snide newspaper writing the Post is the equal of the Times-Herald in its news columns. I think Alger has a lot of explaining to do. Why not let him make it in the forum of the Baltimore Court—and keep your bias out of the piece until then.… All I suggest is objectivity. I don’t know the answer. But neither does the Post—and I expect more of the Post than other papers.…
Phil responded, agreeing that Rowe had “caught us with our objectivity down,” but adding, “There were no bad intentions involved, just some
silly judgments, and we are wistfully hoping that we shall learn from experience.”
On the other hand, we were attacked for a moderate editorial comment by Merlo Pusey to the effect that
Hiss had the misfortune of being tempted to betray his country in an era of widespread illusions about Communism and of being tried for perjury in connection with his offense in a period of cold war when the pendulum of public sentiment had swung far in the other direction. That does not excuse him or minimize the enormity of the crime of which he has been convicted.
Merlo was referring to the era of the Popular Front, when liberals viewed the communists as allies in the world’s struggle against fascism, which appeared to be and was then the major threat.
When Secretary of State Dean Acheson was asked to comment on Hiss’s conviction in his second trial, he made his famous comment, “I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss,” whom he had known well for years. The
Post
, in an editorial entitled “Conflict of Loyalties,” was critical of Acheson’s statement, saying: “Mr. Acheson has played right into the hands of the yammerers in our midst who are trying to rend our society with the Alger Hiss conviction as the instrument—has, indeed, given them a handle.… Judgment was obscured when Secretary Acheson decided to yield to a personal sentiment.”
Two things followed, both indicative of Phil’s dilemma over dealing with these delicate issues for the paper. Some Acheson supporters who were good friends of ours—Paul Porter, Joe Rauh, Oscar Cox, and Thurman Arnold—wrote a letter to the editor of the
Post
supporting Acheson’s statement “as an act of personal courage and a declaration of principle rare in past history and virtually unprecedented in these times.” Felix Frankfurter also wrote to Phil on the very day the editorial appeared:
A free society implies a free press and a free press implies a free editor. Feeling these truths very deeply there have been instances in the past, as there will doubtless be in the future, when I have vigorously defended you against the charge of responsibility for editorial views that for one reason or another aroused criticism on the part of friends of yours.
The occasion for these remarks is, of course, the editorial in this morning’s
POST
, “Conflict of Loyalties.” You do not need to be told that the views which it expresses run counter to many deep convictions of mine, not the least my conviction about the duty
of the press. To worry lest uninformed people will disregard “weighed words” or that “yammerers in our midst” will make a misuse of them and therefore to deplore a manifestation of moral clarity, is to join the misinformed and the yammerers. I had supposed that the press enjoys its constitutional status because its duty is to enlighten and not to submit to darkness.
The Hiss case dominated all our minds; it was all we seemed to talk about. One night, Scotty and Sally Reston came to dinner, and as they sat down in our library and reached for a drink, Scotty said, “Shall we talk about something else for five minutes or shall we get right down to business?”
So, contrary to the perception of those attacking us from the right that the
Post
was a liberal, left-leaning paper, we were being assailed by those on the left, who felt we were too conservative and not vigilant enough in speaking out against right-wing excesses and in defense of civil liberties. In fact, there was a mixture of views on the editorial page, but Herbert Elliston and Phil were the deciding voices. The
Post
, indeed, had sympathized with Alger Hiss during the early stages of his trials but, as more and more evidence came to light, had come to the conclusion that he was a “cool and cynical perjurer.”
T
HE YEAR
1948 was the first election year for Phil and me as controlling owners of the
Post
, and we went together to both political parties’ conventions that summer. Conventions are fascinating to attend as journalists, and certainly as publishers—more so then than now, when everything is decided in the primaries. To find out what’s going on behind the scenes you have to know people and be able to maneuver in crowds, to meet and exchange views with politicians and journalists from all over the country. In 1948, we were still young and the
Post
was still relatively unknown. Everyone else looked important to me, and Phil and I went around with my father, but even he was somewhat at a loss. I remember seeing Henry and Clare Booth Luce come into a restaurant in Philadelphia and thinking how important they looked—and indeed they were. I was very excited to be there but felt very new and small.
In the Truman-Dewey election, the
Post
maintained its tradition, begun under my father’s independent ownership, of not endorsing a candidate for the presidency. Rather, the paper commented editorially on both major candidates. We criticized Dewey’s statements indicating that he would turn over a large measure of control of atomic energy to private industry, and praised his statements about the Berlin blockade. We criticized
Truman for suggesting that Dewey was a “totalitarian” and agreed with a great deal of his denunciation of the Congress.
The last Gallup poll published before the election gave Dewey a five-percentage-point lead over Truman. When it became clear that Truman had indeed fooled the pundits and pulled off a political miracle, Phil, having spent much of the night at the office, sent off a telegram to the president, which he printed on page one of the morning-after paper:
You are hereby invited to attend a “crow banquet” to which this newspaper proposes to invite newspaper editorial writers, political reporters and editors, including our own along with pollsters, radio commentators and columnists for the purpose of providing a repast appropriate to the appetite created by the late election.
The main course will consist of breast of tough old crow en glace (You will eat turkey).
The Democratic National Committee has agreed to furnish the toothpicks to be used by the guests who (it is feared) will require months to get the last of the crow out of their teeth.
We hope you will consent to deliver the address of the evening. As the dean of American election forecasters (and the only accurate one) it is much desired that you share with your colleagues the secret of your analytical success.
Dress for guest of honor, white tie; for others—sack cloth.
The president was highly amused, responding:
I received on the train [back from Independence, Missouri] your very handsome invitation to me to attend a “crow banquet.” I know that we could have a good time together, but I feel I must decline. As I said en route to Washington, I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together now and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.
Truman also added, quite magnanimously, “Incidentally, I want to say that despite what your commentators and polls said, your news coverage of my campaign was fair and comprehensive.”
W
HAT WAS MOST
important for us personally about the 1948 election was the terrible trouble in which our great friend Prich found himself. In the Kentucky Senate race that year between the Democrat, Virgil Chapman—for
whom Prich didn’t even particularly care—and the liberal Republican John Sherman Cooper, whom he liked, he did an incredibly wrong and foolish thing that ruined his life. Someone came to him and asked him to sign some ballots with faked names, and Prich did.